Help a Charity, Save a Life

Hello, this is Gill at EngVid and today we have a special guest with us, Rebecca from a medical

charity based in the UK called Anthony Nolan. So Rebecca, welcome, thank you for being with us

today. Thanks for having me. Okay and so thank you very much for being here and answering some

questions about Anthony Nolan the charity and would you like to tell us something about yourself

and the work that you do for Anthony Nolan? Sure, so I am Director of Registered Development at

Anthony Nolan which means that I lead a team who recruit and look after a stem cell register of

people who have volunteered to donate their stem cells and I think we'll talk a bit later about

what that actually means. So I live in London where the Anthony Nolan headquarters is and I've

had a career in a few different charities in volunteer management and program management

and I've been at Anthony Nolan for about six years now in lots of different roles. Okay, okay that's

great. So you mentioned stem cells so that's a bit sort of technical, maybe some of our viewers

won't know what they are but I'm sure we'll come to that and clarify as we go along. So okay

and so can you tell us a little bit about the history of the charity and what the main

work of the charity is? Sure, so Anthony Nolan as you said it is a medical charity,

we're a blood cancer charity and what we do is we save the lives of people who have blood cancer

and who need a stem cell transplant. So that means that we make life-saving connections between

people with blood cancer who need a transplant and incredible strangers who sign up and volunteer to

donate their stem cells to somebody who needs those stem cells to save their life. We save

three lives every day which is pretty incredible and what it means is if somebody has blood cancer

sometimes they'll have lots of different treatment and none of that treatment will work and they'll

need the stem cell transplant to save their life. So chemotherapy and radiotherapy which you may

have heard of hasn't worked and they'll need a stem cell transplant to sort of replace and reboot

their immune system and hopefully cure them of their blood cancer or their blood disorder.

So we do this by recruiting volunteers who are willing to donate their stem cells to somebody

who needs them and hopefully to save their life. So we've been founded in 1974 by a lady called

Shirley Nolan who was looking for a stem cell donor for her son who had a blood disorder and

he needed a stem cell donor to save his life but there were no registers in the world and so she

set up the Anthony Nolan Register in the UK and we now have over 800,000 people on the register in

the UK and there's now a global network of lots of different registers as well so it's a really

incredible legacy that she left in memory of her son who sadly died a few years later.

Okay, wow, so that's amazing and of course because your work now has an international

spread all our viewers, whatever country they're in, might be able to possibly become potential

donors and put their details on the register. So that's really interesting. So blood cancer,

leukaemia, that's the main medical condition that you work in to help people to recover

from that. So are there any other types of illness that you also deal with? So blood cancer actually

affects a surprisingly large number of people. In the UK, around 104 people every day are

diagnosed with blood cancer and that could be leukaemia, as you mentioned, or it could be

lymphoma or a myeloma and there are different types of blood cancer. But we also provide stem

cell transplants for other blood disorders and other life-limiting health conditions. So for

example sickle cell anemia or thalassemia and sometimes other immune disorders as well. So it's

not just blood cancer but it often can be a cure for blood cancer as well. Wow, that's great and

you've reminded me of a friend of mine a few years ago, a young guy called Tom and he sort of

out of the blue, he developed blood cancer and he was in hospital for many months and they eventually

found a stem cell donor for him on a database. I think it came from Germany and he recovered so

that was a good result for him. But of course he was sharing a hospital ward with other people

other people who didn't make it so, you know, it just brings home to you, you know, some people

get a donation and they recover but I guess lots of other people they never managed to find a

matching donor and so that's how important it is for people to register,

you know, in case they're ever needed for that. Yeah and it's interesting that you say his donor

came from Germany as your tissue type, which is what we match patients and donors on, it's like a

kind of identifier of your immune system and that's largely determined by your ethnic background

and in the UK we share a lot of heritage with Germany so quite often we will provide donors for

patients in Germany or German donors will donate for a UK patient as well. That's an interesting

connection. I think in the language, in terms of language of course, we have a lot of Germanic

words in the English language as well so there's a connection there for people who are learning

English, where the words come from, so that's very interesting. So,

how might Anthony Nolan, as a charity, be relevant perhaps to our viewers in

different countries? Are there any particular nationalities or male or female,

different age groups, what kind of person might, you know, be in demand as a potential donor,

would you say? So, as I mentioned there, we work internationally, so quite often we provide donors

to Germany and Germany provide donors to us, but we're also part of a global community called

the World Marrow Donor Association and that brings all of the registers across the world together

and there's over 38 million people on the global register, which is incredible. All people who've

signed up to potentially save someone's life. So, there's a lot of people on the global register

who've saved someone's life, but not every country has a register and some of the biggest registers

are in countries like the UK, the US and Germany, where the populations are majority white heritage

and because, as I said, your tissue type, which is what we match the patients and donors on,

is largely determined by your ethnicity, it means that patients who are from minority ethnic

backgrounds have a much lower chance of finding a life-saving donor. So, we need more people from

minority ethnic backgrounds and mixed ethnic backgrounds to join the register, wherever you

are in the world, so that we can diversify that pool of donors and hopefully be able to find that

matching donor, that life-saving donor, for every patient who needs one, regardless of their ethnic

background. And we also need younger people, so younger donors are better for patients,

but older donors, like Anthony Nolan, will limit the age of people who can sign up. So, Anthony

Nolan, you can sign up between 16 and 30 and there are different age restrictions around the world,

but broadly we need younger people to join the register. Okay, so that's great. So, if our viewers

sort of fit that kind of profile or if they know someone who fits that profile, hopefully they will

take part in registering. That sounds great, thank you. And so, we will give the link,

a web link, for that international donor website towards the end of this video,

and also a link to Anthony Nolan's own website, so that's great. So, for someone to become

a registered donor, do they have to kind of give a saliva sample or something like that,

with some sort of DNA details in it? Yes, so wherever you are in the world,

you can visit the World Maridona Association website, the link that you'll see a bit later,

and you can use that tool to find the register in your country. Then you'll need to fill in a

form with some medical details and some personal details, and then usually, it depends on the

country, but in the UK we'll send you a swab, a cheek swab test in the post. So, it's really simple,

you just swab your cheek and put it back in the envelope and send it back to our labs,

and that's where we'll test that sample and record your tissue type, as I mentioned earlier,

on our database. Then every time a patient needs a matching donor, we'll search that database for

someone who matches them. Some countries do it slightly differently, so some will take

a blood sample from people who are already blood donors. We used to take saliva samples,

but most registries now have moved to this swab sample, so it's really simple.

Okay, that's great. So, painless really, it's quite easy. Well, if you have to

give a blood sample, that's not quite so painless, but nothing too scary.

No, it's very simple to join and doesn't take very long at all.

That's great, lovely, thank you. So, it's mostly, you mentioned stem cells, which come from the bone

marrow, so that comes from inside the bones. So, if someone's going to eventually be asked

to donate that, what kind of process would they have to go through?

So, this is our biggest challenge as an organisation. So, there are lots of misconceptions

and kind of false, fake news about what it is to donate stem cells, and 90% of the time donating

stem cells is actually a very simple process that's done through the bloodstream. So, you'll

have a few injections to help your body to produce the extra stem cells and to make the stem cells

come from your bone marrow into your blood, and then we will connect you to a machine that's a

bit like a dialysis machine. So, you have a needle in each arm and we filter the stem cells from your

blood, you keep your blood, we take a little bag of stem cells, and those stem cells are sent to

the patient wherever they are in the world and hopefully will save their life. That happens 90%

of the time. Occasionally, we do need to take the stem cells directly from the bone marrow,

and that's done under general anaesthetic, takes about half an hour, and you'll wake up with a bit

of an achy back, but you will kind of remake your stem cells in a week or so, and our donors say

that it's, you know, it's a really simple and a very small price to pay to potentially save

somebody's life and really not the painful process that people think it is. Okay, well, that's great,

and as you say, the thought that you're helping to save somebody's life is, you know, makes it

worthwhile, so that's great. Amazing. And is there, there's another kind of donation, is it to do with

the umbilical cord? Is another thing that people can choose to donate? Yes, so I can't speak across

the world, but in the UK, if you're giving birth at a hospital where we're able to offer this,

so where we have a nurse who's able to collect the umbilical cord cells, you can donate your

umbilical cord after giving birth, and it's usually thrown away, so it's a really simple

thing to do. You just sign up and offer to donate, and if we're able to collect it, then we can,

and I mean, that's an even more simple process, but of course, it's quite an expensive process,

so we can only do it in certain hospitals, and we focus on hospitals and areas of high ethnic

diversity so that we can make sure, again, that we are building that register of really diverse

donors for all of our patients. Okay, so that's something that has to be really thought about in

advance of giving birth, isn't it, rather than say, "Oh, by the way, I've decided to give my

umbilical cord." I guess people should say, or do people ever, maybe in the UK, when people are

having check-ups, prenatal check-ups before they give birth, is it ever mentioned whether they,

or is there a form to fill in where people can say, "Yes, I hadn't thought of that, but yes,

I'd be willing to do that when the time comes." Yeah, absolutely. Either chat to your midwife,

or you can visit the Amity Nolan website, and we've got a list there of the hospitals, and you

can express your interest if you are giving birth at one of those hospitals, and let us know the

and then let us know that you're interested, and then we can get in touch and talk to you in a bit

more detail. Okay, that's great, lovely. Okay, good to know. Right, so, and then, of course,

this, here we are towards the end of 2020, which has been a bit of a strange year for a lot of

people all over the world with the pandemic. So, how has the pandemic affected the work of

Anthony Nolan this year? So, in lots of ways, I think, like, I don't think any company or

organisation has been unaffected, but for Anthony Nolan, our recruitment of donors has been affected,

so we usually recruit both online and also we hold events at universities and schools,

but obviously we haven't been able to do that, we haven't been able to get people together to do

that. So, we have, our recruitment has suffered, we've recruited fewer people to the register this year.

So, I mentioned earlier about that international network we have for transporting stem cells all

around the world for patients, and at the beginning of the pandemic that became really difficult

because of the restrictions on travel and also the reduction in flights. So, we very quickly set up

what we called a handover hub at Heathrow Airport, and there we were able to bring stem cells in from

around the world, and then a UK courier would pick them up and take them to the hospital wherever the

was, and that reduced the risk of people travelling from abroad into UK hospitals where patients were

vulnerable, and also made it much easier for us to get those cells to the patients quickly.

And our patients, our blood cancer patients and patients who have had transplants are really

vulnerable after their transplant and whilst they're having treatment, so we have been able to

make sure that we support them through the pandemic. We set up a support line, an advice line to help

them to keep safe during the pandemic. So, lots of our patients were shielding and obviously not

able to leave their house, so we put in lots of support for them as well over the last year.

And of course, as a charity as well, our income has been affected. We haven't been able to run

fundraising events, and that's meant that we've unfortunately been able to raise less

funds this year, which means that we have been in a bit more of a difficult position as a charity

this year as well. Okay, yes, yes, I think a lot of charities have, you know,

been affected that way, as well as, of course, businesses losing income too. So,

so hopefully 2020 will be a year of sort of, you know, recovering and coming back up to speed,

that sort of thing. Yes, okay, okay. And then some of our viewers who may already be in the UK,

or they may be planning to come to the UK, they may not have considered that the

idea of possibly working for a charity organisation, maybe they've been thinking

in terms of perhaps working for a business or whatever. So, can you give us an idea of what

is it like working for a charity? How is it different? How is it similar to working for

a business or a commercial organisation? Sure, so I've always worked in charities. So I can only

talk really about charities, but like any other, any business or organisation, we also have

professional services. So we have lawyers and accountants, nurses, and doctors who work for us

too. So there's lots of opportunity for people who already have a profession to transfer that

to the charity sector. And then we also have some other roles which are a bit more unique to the

charity sector, say fundraising, helping charities to raise money through lots of different ways,

through events and marathons, and hosting big balls and fundraising events, and volunteer

management. So looking after people who give their time to organisations and making sure that they

are happy and enjoy their roles. And for me, the difference is that I'm really motivated by

working every day to have an impact. And Anthony Nolan, that's on patients' lives, and really

being able to say every day that, however small, I'm working towards hopefully saving lives and

having a really positive impact rather than driving profit for a bigger organisation. So for

me, it's about the motivation. And that's what keeps me in the charity sector and keeps me

passionate about my job. That's great. Good. So viewers with all sorts of different skills,

you know, would maybe be able to find a place in a charity, you know, with different type of

with different type of business skills and so on. And also with the added, you know, sense of

satisfaction really, of thinking what good they're doing for people saving lives. So it's all a plus,

I'm sure. So that's lovely. Okay. And so that's been a fascinating coverage of your charity and

what you do. And I think we'll put up some links for people to see, I think up on the screen and

also in the video information that will appear with the video on YouTube. So we'll put the link

to the Anthony Nolan website. And we'll also put the link to the international bone marrow

donation website for people to have a look. So thank you very much, Rebecca, for your time.

That's been really fascinating. Thank you for taking time to talk to us about your work and

the work of Anthony Nolan. So, okay. And so that's been interesting for everybody today and an

insight into real life work in the UK. And thanks for watching. And you might also be interested if

you haven't already seen my video on volunteering in a charity shop, which has been a video that's

been available for a while now, where it's a useful place to help to improve your English if

you're in the UK, or you're coming to the UK, volunteer for a few hours a week in a charity shop

and you will be surrounded by people talking English, everyday English, and it will help you

to improve your vocabulary, increase your vocabulary, your grammar, etc. So do have a

look at that one. So thanks very much everyone for watching. Thanks again, Rebecca, for being

with us today. And I hope to see you all again soon. So bye for now.